Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Vegetable French Lentil Soup

Yesterday I made a soup that was really good. I am very picky with my soups and I am not a fan of lentils which make me liking this soup so amazing. It was a vegetable french lentil soup that I kind of just threw together, so I don’t really have a recipe, per se, but I can remember what I did fairly well.

I decided to make sushi rolls for phase 1 of my cleanse but since I could not have soy sauce, I wanted to create something to dip the sushi in. I decided to try and make a sauce from pumpkin seeds, lime, rice vinegar, salt and dates for sweetness. I did not like how it turned out.

I had already decided to make soup from some random French Green Lentils I had, already cooked and ready to go. I added some veggies to a pot and not wanting to waste the sauce I prepared, I put it in the pot to cook with the veggies. It lent not only a good taste to the soup, but also a really neat color since the sauce was light green. Here’s what I did if you want to try to replicate it.

For the sauce, add all the ingredients except the water in the blender. Add 1/4 cup of the water and blend until smooth. Slowly add the rest of the water to get a good consistency.

In a large pot, add the chopped onion and sliced carrot along with ½ cup of water and heat on medium high heat. Let this cook for about 10 minutes to soften the vegetables. Add the sauce, cooked lentils, kale, salt and pepper to the soup base and the additional water. Cook for another 15 minutes on medium heat. Add more water depending on the consistency desired.

* To cook the lentils, simply combine 1 cup of French Green Lentils with 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer and cover pot with a lid. Cook about 30 minutes.